Last weekend I attended TEDx Adelaide. The actual event was sold out, so I joined a small group of people watching the event streamed into a lecture theatre at Adelaide University.

TED talks are seminars in which a wide and fascinating range of people give short talks poresenting their ideas to the world. These are made available free on the internet, and they provide a great resource and inspiration. TEDx talks are authorised but independent TED events organised by peopel in locations such as Adelaide where there are lots of interesting thinkers but perhaps not enough of a critical mass to bring the TED roadshow to town.

At TEDx Adelaide there were a range of speakers on topics as diverse as community radio and nutrition during pregnancy. Some of the ideas presented were not exactly ground-breaking, but all of them were interesting. One of the highlights for me was Wend Lear’s presentation of photos produced by Palestinian children illustrating their lives. Some had illustrated the ‘normal’ side of life, and some had illustrated the particular hardships of their existence, and these were edited together into a poignant presentation which reduced a number of people to tears.

There was a lively Twitter stream (#TEDxADL) during the event which provided commentary both on the organisation and also on the content of the speakers (and occasional moments of humour).

Unfortunately the technical organisation was not quite up to scratch. The streaming to Adelaide Uni was very jumpy, and seemed incapable of producing both sound and vision at the same time. I understand that this was fixed in the afternoon but by then I and most other people present had left and gone to watch the remainder of the day from home. Also at the time of writing 6 days after the event the website still promises that the videos will be uploaded to YouTube ‘soon’, but there is no indication when this will happen. Hopefully these things will be sorted out in due course.

TEDx Adelaide was a great event, and I am happy to support it. It was interesting and a very worthwhile thing to do, and I am looking forward to the next one, whenever that may be.